What evidence is required?

RufusAtticus · #21 21st June 2002, 02:52 PM

Originally posted by Lanakila
But, because science is studied by scientists who primarily have a belief that evolution (macro and micro happened) and look at the evidence with that belief in mind, often the interpretation of the very same data is skewed toward that evolutionary belief. You can call it bias, or propaganda if you like, but this is in fact the truth.

No Lanakila, that is not the truth. Are you aware that the science of evolution hasn't always existed? That the people who developed the contents of evolutionary theory did not have a prior assumption that it was true. It took almost eighty years of research to go from Darwins' inital concepts to the modern synthesis. That process of scientific refinement reveals that evolution was not simply taken as a given. Your statement completely ignores the facts of the history of biology.

I admit I have a bias, or presupposition more correctly. Most evolutionists don't admit this and can't see how that presupposition causes the interpretation of the same evidence to be different than mine.

That sounds a lot like you can't imagine someone without bias or presuppositions.

npetreley · #22 21st June 2002, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by tycho
My conclusion: unless Lanakila & Nick change their requirements of proof, it is not physically possible, regardless of how bulletproof the evolutionist argument becomes, to convince them of it.

Your mistake is in thinking the argument is bulletproof. If anything, it is riddled with bullet holes. I'm simply enjoying watching you guys prop up the rotting corpse day after day and scream "It's alive! It's alive!"

Jerry Smith · #23 21st June 2002, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by npetreley

Your mistake is in thinking the argument is bulletproof. If anything, it is riddled with bullet holes. I'm simply enjoying watching you guys prop up the rotting corpse day after day and scream "It's alive! It's alive!"

We must be a fine sight to see. In the middle, there is evolution happening all around us in small ways every day. There in the middle is a fossil record that clearly shows the gradual change between ancient and modern life. In the middle, there is homology within groups at the level of DNA even in the pseudogenes.

On one side is a group of people propping up the theory that explains it all against unrelenting attacks that are founded entirely on ignorance of the theory. On the other side there is a group of people pointing out the pores on the anthroporphized theory's skin & and yelling "look at those gaping holes! I don't care if it can walk, talk breathe & reproduce with holes like that, its got to be dead!"

A fine sight indeed.

seebs · #24 21st June 2002, 07:34 PM

Originally posted by npetreley

Your mistake is in thinking the argument is bulletproof. If anything, it is riddled with bullet holes. I'm simply enjoying watching you guys prop up the rotting corpse day after day and scream "It's alive! It's alive!"

Your skin is certainly riddled with holes; does that mean that blood just pours out of you?

Perhaps the holes in the theory aren't as big as you think they are.

LiveFreeOrDie · #25 24th June 2002, 12:15 AM

Originally posted by npetreley
1. You can provide the fossil evidence of the gradual evolution of the magnitude of a dinosaur turning into a bird. The only way to do this is to present millions of transitional fossils that show how the features evolved gradually over time. What you can NOT do is show a couple dozen fossils that look like they might have been steps within a transition, because that is not an observation of evolution, it's observation of similar looking things that you can connect only with your imagination. If you can connect them with millions of transitionals, then it's no longer imagination, it's hard evidence.

Nick, I really have to question your honesty here. Really, what difference does it make if I have 100 fossils showing the reptile to mammal transition versus 100 million? All you have is finer-grained gaps. You still have to imagine one form giving birth to the next. I think you're just presenting us with a phony standard because you know it can't be met, not because it has any logical merit.

2. You most prove that you have observed evolution of this type "in the lab." I put "in the lab" in quotes because you can't do it in a test tube with intelligent intervention. Human intervention invalidates the premise of natural causes. The only way to provide hard evidence for evolution by natural causes is to block off a wildlife preserve and observe all the life within it for a few million years until you've recorded the equivalent of the process of a dinosaur evolving into a bird.

Again, I think you are feeding us phony baloney. What difference does it make if I observe evolution over the course of 10 months versus 10 million years? We still have to imagine that the rates and mechanisms of evolution observed in our experiment were valid millions of years in the past.

Why don't you just give us the honest answer and admit that you cannot accept any scientific theory that is in conflict with a literal reading of Genesis? At least then we can accept our differences as matters of faith and not science.